Just a day after the iPhone 13 models were announced by Apple, the first Geekbench score has already surfaced. Someone has benchmarked the GPU performance of the iPhone 13 Pro, and there's a significant performance increase compared to the prior-generation iPhone 12 Pro.
The iPhone 13 Pro, or iPhone14,2, earned a Metal score of 14216, a 55 percent increase compared to the 9123 Metal score earned by the iPhone 12 Pro.
Apple's iPhone 13 models feature an A15 chip with 6 CPU cores, including two performance cores and four efficiency cores. Both the iPhone 13 and iPhone 13 Pro devices have the same CPU, but there are differences when it comes to GPU. The iPhone 13 and 13 mini are equipped with a 4-core GPU, while the higher-end iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max have a 5-core GPU.
Apple has called the A15 chip with the 5-core GPU in the Pro models the "world's fastest smartphone chip," and says that it delivers "up to 50% faster graphics performance than any other smartphone chip." Given the difference demonstrated in Metal scores, that appears to be accurate, with the A15 in the Pro models outperforming the A14. The benchmark also confirms that the Pro models feature 6GB RAM as was already seen in Xcode. The iPhone 13 and 13 mini have 4GB RAM.
No one has benchmarked one of the standard iPhone 13 models so we don't know how they compare to the prior-generation A14, nor do we have a benchmark of the CPU to compare CPU performance between the A14 and A15. Apple has said little about the A15's CPU, and rather than comparing it to the A14, Apple instead pointed out that it's "up to 50% faster" than the competition.
The iPad mini has the same A15 chip with 5-core GPU that's in the iPhone 13 Pro models, so we can expect the same graphics performance from Apple's updated tablet.
With the iPhone 13 lineup set to launch next week and soon to be in the hands of reviewers, we won't have to wait too much longer to get additional benchmarks of the A15 that will give us more insight into its overall performance. The new iPhones are set to be available for pre-order on Friday, September 17 at 5:00 a.m. Pacific Time.